WASHINGTON POST: A SECTION, 02/03/96 Copyright (c) 1996 The Washington Post Co.; Fair use reprint for nonprofit scholarly use only
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Foreign Service
LONDON, Feb. 2 -- One of the world's most prestigious book publishers confronted a rebellion today among some of its academic advisers for canceling publication of a study about Greece because of fear of reprisals from nationalist extremists there. The manuscript -- Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood by Anastasia Karakasidou -- is a scholarly study of ethnicity in the Greek province of Macedonia and had been enthusiastically endorsed for publication by the panel of experts to which Cambridge University Press had submitted it. But a spokesman for Cambridge Press said that after consulting, among others, British diplomats in Greece, the publisher decided that the author and the subject were too controversial and could put at risk "life and limb" of Cambridge Press employees in Greece. Three academics -- Cambridge Press editorial board members and manuscript reviewers -- have resigned or disassociated themselves from the publishing house in protest over the decision, first reported this morning in the Guardian newspaper here. A fourth is reportedly threatening to quit the editorial board unless the decision is rescinded. Among the protesting academics was Michael Herzfeld, a Harvard anthropology professor, specialist on Greece and Cambridge Press editorial board member. "From the perspective of academic freedom, this is a serious matter of literary preemptive appeasement," Herzfeld said in an interview. Apart from that, he said he took strong exception to the notion that there was any serious potential for violence from publishing the book, saying the idea reflected ignorance of Greek affairs and represented an "insult" to Greece itself. He said he believes Cambridge Press was acting to protect Cambridge University's commercial interests in Greece, which include English- language book sales, language schools and a flourishing English proficiency examination sponsored by the university. Richard Fisher, a Cambridge University Press spokesman, strenuously denied that. He said while "there was no doubt the manuscript was extremely high quality," Cambridge Press had not formally contracted to publish it. When considering late last year whether to do so, he said, the board of academics that runs Cambridge Press decided that "as responsible employers, the potential risk to life and limb" did not "justify publication." It was "an incredibly difficult decision." Fisher said Cambridge had four or five employees in Greece. "None of us can remember a similar case," said Charles Stewart, a British anthropologist who was on the reviewing panel that recommended publication to Cambridge Press.
The Cambridge Press controversy strikes a particularly sensitive chord in Britain because of the plight of British author Salman Rushdie, who still lives in semi-hiding under police protection because his novel The Satanic Verses provoked a death sentence from Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The very name Macedonia is extremely sensitive in Greece. Macedonia is a region of the Balkans that has been claimed in whole or part by Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. It was divided after World War I between Greece and the nation that ultimately became Yugoslavia. But in 1991, the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia declared independence, calling itself the Republic of Macedonia. Its population is 61 percent Slavic and 21 percent Albanian. The country borders on the Greek province bearing the same name, and Greece bitterly disputes the right of independent Macedonia to use the name, which it claims exclusively for its own region. Greece, as a matter of policy, has denied the existence of Slavic Macedonian minorities in that region and has sought to "Hellenize" it, linguistically and culturally.
As described by Stewart, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood challenges the Greek position, based in part on interviews with elderly residents of Greek Macedonia who identify themselves and their roots as Slavic. The Greek-born author, Karakasidou, who now teaches at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, received death threats in 1993, reportedly from Greek nationalist extremists, after presenting her research. Stewart said he and others made this known to Cambridge Press when they first reviewed the manuscript a year ago. The company nonetheless moved toward publication, putting the author through conventional academic rigors of rewrite and revision as recommended by Stewart and University of Sussex historian Mark Mazower, also a Cambridge Press manuscript reviewer. Though Fisher said Cambridge Press received no threats as it progressed with the editing, Cambridge's sales representative in Athens consulted the British Embassy in Athens and became concerned, Fisher said. According to a Jan. 12 letter sent to Stewart and others by the Cambridge Press editor in charge of the book, Jessica Kuper, "the senior officers of the Press were in no doubt that the manuscript was of high quality, as attested by the enthusiastic reviews, but, understandably, they judged it necessary to make further inquiries on the security question, for Greek nationalist feelings were running high on the Macedonian question."
British officials did not read the manuscript. But, according to a spokesman for the Foreign Office here, "we made it clear that the subject" of Macedonian ethnicity "arouses emotions in Greece and that the author faces problems as a result of her research; that the possibility existed of critical or perhaps violent reaction to the book. We did not say there would be such a reaction." Nor did the British Embassy advise for or against publication. "They did not ask us about publication of the book," said the spokesman. "The embassy faced a difficult question and gave an honest answer." As a result of the decision not to publish, Herzfeld and University of Minnesota professor Stephen Gudeman have resigned from the editorial board of the Cambridge Press's anthropology series. Cambridge professor Jack Goody -- the founder of the series -- has threatened to quit if the decision is not reversed, the Guardian reported this morning. And Mazower said in an interview today that he has told Cambridge Press "I can't have anything more to do with them. I'm a historian" of the Balkans. "Virtually all my work makes someone or the other pretty angry. Most people who work on the Balkans get used to that." Stewart, a lecturer at University College, London, is furious: "To my knowledge there hasn't been any terrorism on account of Macedonia in the 1990s. . . . If anything, Macedonia is progressively being put on the back burner" as an issue in Greece. Last September, Greece and Macedonia agreed to establish diplomatic relations, and Athens reopened its border and hence its ports to the landlocked neighbor. Macedonia's president, Kiro Gligorov, who was seriously injured in a car-bomb blast in October, agreed to change Macedonia's flag and modify its constitution. The issue of Macedonia's name, however, remains to be settled.
New York Times, Saturday, February 17.
By SARAH LYALL c.1996 N.Y. Times News Service; Fair Use reprint for non-profit scholarly use only.
LONDON - Anastasia Karakasidou's first book, a 300-page study of ethnicity and identity in the northern Greek province of Macedonia, seemed poised for publication after surviving months of grueling academic review at Cambridge University Press and winning high praise from academic specialists for its insights and fairness. But in December, Ms. Karakasidou received surprising news: The press had decided not to publish the book after all, it said, because it feared for the safety of its staff members in Greece. Back home in Stony Brook, N.Y., the Greek-born Ms. Karakasidou, an assistant professor of anthropology at Queens College, still sounds stunned. She had appreciated that her subject was a potentially provocative one -Greeks bristle at suggestions that residents of that province consider themselves anything but true Greeks - but she never expected this. ``They had my manuscript for more than a year and a half,'' she said in an interview this week. ``I had no idea that this was happening, and I had no way of defending myself.''
The immediate result of the Cambridge University Press' decision not to go ahead with the book, Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood, was the outraged resignation of three of its academic advisers in anthropology, who charged that the publisher, one of the most prestigious in the world, with violating the author's freedom of speech and caving in to a threat that was largely hypothetical. But what in the old days might have remained a controlled protest by a small group of disgruntled academics has now expanded into a full-scale offensive, via the Internet. Earlier this week, two of the three people who resigned as editorial advisers to Cambridge University Press - Stephen Gudeman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, and Michael Herzfeld, a professor of anthropology at Harvard - sent a battle cry to colleagues around the world, calling for scholars not to submit manuscripts to, or review books for, Cambridge. "By hindering the production and reviewing of new manuscripts,'' their message said, "we hope to demonstrate the academic world's collective dismay."
Although it is too early to gauge the effects of the Internet manifesto, it is clear that the word is getting out, fast, as E- mail messages zoom from campus to campus. "It's gone out to thousands of anthropologists," said Herzfeld. "I think the historians are getting it as well." At the University of Florida, Thomas Gallant, a professor of modern Greek and Balkan history, said that he no longer wished to be published by Cambridge, even though he was about two-thirds finished writing a book for the publisher on the social history of modern Greece. "I am having legal counsel examine my contract because I think that ethically I cannot remain committed to the press," he said.
Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, is a study of three villages in the Greek province of Macedonia that asserts, among other things, that many of the residents speak Slavic dialects and consider themselves Slavo-Macedonian, not Greek. The findings challenge the official position of the Greek government, which remains at odds with the neighboring Republic of Macedonia, a part of former Yugoslavia, and denies the existence of a Slavic ethnic minority within its own borders. In the past, the Macedonian question has spurred nationalist-led violence in Greece. Ms. Karakasidou herself was threatened by right-wing groups two years ago after she published articles with conclusions similar to those in her book. But, she says, she continued to live in Greece without incident. Ms. Karakasidou submitted her manuscript to Cambridge more than 18 months ago, sending it on a well-worn path of academic reviews and revisions. Finally, its reviewers deemed it ready to go, and Ms. Karakasidou, though she had no contract in hand, had every reason to assume that Cambridge would publish it.
"It is easily the most carefully researched and balanced assessment of the on-the-ground situation, from a historical and ethnographic perspective, that I have ever seen," Herzfeld said. But a nervous Cambridge Press decided to seek advice about the potential for violence in Greece. Among other things, the publisher asked for an evaluation from the British Embassy in Athens, which sent a two-paragraph response saying no one at the Embassy had read the book, but that its subject was potentially controversial. "It is impossible to judge the extent of a likely reaction, since so much depends on the political situation at the time of publication," said the letter, "but it could take the form of public criticism, protests and demonstrations, or violence or threat of violence against the author or publishers." That was enough for the publisher, which has about five employees in Greece. In December, after consulting its 20-member ruling body, it decided not to proceed with the book.
Cambridge Press says it is unlikely to change its mind. "At no stage was there a contract signed or a commitment made," said Adrian du Plessis, the publisher's communications director. "Given the way we are established in Greece, it would be inappropriate for us to publish the book. It is not accurate to say that we banned it or censored it."
Some of the publisher's critics charge that Cambridge was also worried about local boycotts if the book went ahead. Cambridge has a lucrative market for English-language books in Greece, and administers English exams to hundreds of thousands of people each year. du Plessis disputes this interpretation. "I've been involved in every discussion," he said, "and at every occasion I have never heard any economic motivation discussed. The issue was the risk to staff." At the same time, the notion that the book was bound to spur violence has annoyed Greek scholars, who say that with the recent thawing in relations between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, the possibility of reprisals has ebbed considerably. "There really, really, was no tangible threat to the press, its personnel, or its property," Gallant said. One thing the publicity has done is to draw unexpected attention to Ms. Karakasidou at a relatively early point in her career. Several publishers have expressed interest and this week, the University of Chicago Press offered her a contract. While Cambridge Press has been forced to defend itself against irate anthropologists, it is also even facing the wrath of some Greeks for its timidity.
Elias Gounaris, the Greek ambassador to London, sent a scathing letter to the Guardian newspaper, defending his country's honor. "The worst possible fate that could befall a Cambridge University Press book on an anthropological subject in Greece would be indifference, spiced perhaps with the odd verbal attack against it in the column of some obscure extremist publication," the letter said. "Intolerant voices do of course exist, as in most countries, but so far they have always dismally failed to silence anyone. In Greece, at least."